The response of the emergency services to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 “went badly wrong” and contributed to at least one of the deaths, the chairman of a public inquiry has concluded.
Suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, detonated a device on May 22, 2017 in the foyer of Manchester Arena, known as the City Room, a few minutes after the end of an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people.
In it the chairman of the inquiry, Sir John Saunders, said: “Significant aspects of the emergency response on May 22, 2017 went wrong. This should not have happened.”
He said: “Some of what went wrong had serious and, in the case of John Atkinson, fatal consequences for those directly affected by the explosion.”
The inquiry heard Atkinson, who was not attended to by paramedics for 47 minutes, would have had “quite a high” chance of survival if he had got medical treatment earlier.
Ron Blake, a passerby who was praised after he used his wife’s belt as a tourniquet in an attempt to save Atkinson’s life, told the BBC that “big mistakes were made that night” and many of those in charge of the emergency response had “got it all wrong.”
Unveiling his report on Thursday, Saunders said, “Those who have listened to the evidence will not be surprised that I am highly critical of many of the rescue operation.”
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, wrote on Twitter, “I will carefully consider the recommendations made so far to strengthen our response.”
During the public inquiry Pete Weatherby, KC, a barrister representing seven of the bereaved families, said there was a “command vacuum” in the wake of the bombing.
That review found the fire service played “no meaningful role” in the first two hours after the bomb went off because “risk-averse” senior officers ordered crews to stay outside until they could confirm it was not part of a wider, Mumbai-style terrorist attack.
In his report, Saunders said: “Had firefighters got to the City Room as soon as they could have done, they would have removed the injured using proper equipment which would have been safe and quick. Instead, the injured had to be removed on railings and pieces of cardboard which were uncomfortable, unsafe, painful and inevitably this meant that it took longer for each patient to be removed.”
Dawn Docx, who was interim chief fire officer in 2018, apologised unreservedly after the Kerslake Review and has since become chief fire officer in North Wales.
Neil Barnes, who was the ambulance’s service most senior officer that night, admitted to the inquiry that he showed “no leadership” in the first two hours after the bombing.
Barnes, who was the on-call gold commander, responsible for “command, response, and recovery,” initially stayed at home when the silver commander, Annemarie Rooney, rang him and told him about the attack. But he denied the fact that he was due to fly off on a holiday the following day influenced his decision.
The public inquiry heard Barnes was needed to attend a meeting with the gold commanders from the police and fire service to coordinate the response to the attack, but he had already asked to be relieved by another senior ambulance service officer because he had the flight the next day.
Barnes was awarded the Queen’s Ambulance Service Medal the following year.
While Saunders’s report was critical of Barnes and several other senior officers, he said, “I have not looked for scapegoats and everyone who I have criticised has had the opportunity to respond to those criticism.”
Sir John Saunders, the chairman of the Manchester Arena Inquiry, said it was likely Abedi would have detonated his device if he had been confronted but “the loss of life and injury is highly likely to have been less.”
The Abedi family were originally from Libya but had settled in Manchester.
Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, and his mother, Samia Tabbal, have returned to Libya and have never cooperated with the police’s investigation into their sons.
